It was late in the afternoon of a long summer's day in Belgium.
Father Van Hove was still at work in the harvest-field, though
the sun hung so low in the west that his shadow, stretching far
across the level, green plain, reached almost to the little red-
roofed house on the edge of the village which was its home.
Another shadow, not so long, and quite a little broader,
stretched itself beside his, for Mother Van Hove was also in the
field, helping her husband to load the golden sheaves upon an old
blue farm-cart which stood near by.

Them were also two short, fat shadows which bobbed briskly about
over the green meadow as their owners danced among the wheat-
sheaves or carried handfuls of fresh grass to Pier, the, patient
white farm-horse, hitched to the cart. These gay shadows belon